


smothered, covered, chunked

by SecretReyloTrash (BadOldWest)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, brought to you in part by Capri Sun, waffle house au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 14:01:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17061131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadOldWest/pseuds/SecretReyloTrash
Summary: Ben is a painfully shy college student. Rey is the fellow insomniac next door. He finally gets to see where she goes in the middle of the night when he hears her leave the dorm.





	smothered, covered, chunked

His fingers come back greasy when he wipes them across the bridge of his nose. As he suspected; he is _secreting_ bacon fat through his pores.

She doesn't seem to notice. 

Rey chews in silence across the table from him, somewhat violently, like someone’s coming to take the plate away any second.

Her expression says she’d kill whoever would try.

His approach to his meal is steadier, but not as tentative as he usually eats around other people. There is something about smothered, covered, and chunked that makes it impossible to not inhale it down.

“You get the same thing every time?”

Rey lifts one shoulder in a shrug, tearing off a chunk of her pecan waffle and skating it in a zigzag through the syrup resting in a pool on her plate. She has stared at her food since it was set down in front of her. 

They haven't spoken much at all, really, since she invited him along. Mostly about the menu; him being a waffle virgin and her being a seasoned champ.

“Depends on my mood. But yeah, usually.”

“So this is where you go all the time?”

Her eyes flicker up at him; defensive, aggressive, and somewhat fragile. As though her neighbor noticing some things about her just from proximity was unusual.

Ben hasn’t observed much from his surroundings in the dorm; so maybe it’s fair to give her that. It may well be odd.

He sees her swallow half of her mouthful, the other tucked in the pocket of her cheek for continued chewing. She eats like a fairy-tale monster; for a neighbor who's always so composed and for someone so pretty it’s kind of fun for him to watch.

She lives in the room next to his, the walls incapable of muffling even the slightest sound, so he hears her leave at night. Often, at that.

Alone.

It leads to plenty of time to wonder.

A bout of insomnia, a lifetime of it leading up to this moment, has led him here. He had never expected that to have a payoff, or one that feels so surreal. Watching her shovel food into her mouth like it’s the last night on earth. Both of them pleasantly tired, bleary under the bright lights, chewing mutely like cows.

When he stumbled out of his room -ears perked up to anticipate her comings and goings- in a scramble with a shower caddy, shoes on, no towel, and no clear excuse to be bumping into her other than expectation, he had not pictured _this_ was where she went off to alone after midnight.

Not that it had taken months for him to work up to courage to knowingly be in the same place at the same time as her, even if it was just a hallway.

He had not pictured her looking him up and down, with his arms full of his not-excuse and _just_ bumping into her, and offering for him to come with. But she stuffed her hands in her jackets pockets, leaned back on her heels, and did just that. 

He had to pretend he was even planning on going to the showers in the first place, returning them to his room.

“It’s kind of rowdy,” he looks around, unable to take a moment to speak without food in his mouth. Food has been in his mouth since it was placed in front of him twenty minutes ago. “You really come here to be alone?”

“I like how chaotic it is,” she doesn’t look up from the hashbrowns she shovels into her mouth, “it feels like you’re _with_ people.”

He leans back in the booth.

“Do you not...typically feel that way?”

His attempts to relate to her have been hastily batted away every time; she is quiet and contemplative in a way that makes him forget _she_ invited him here.

It must have been the kindness of a fellow insomniac; like bumping into another human at this hour is as likely while on the surface of Mars and makes for hasty companionship.

“Yeah,” she breathes once, harshly, through her nose, _“yeah.”_

He doesn’t know how to tell her that he can relate, so he tries to keep reading her. Not realizing that’s riskier than just admitting something about himself.

“So you’re lonely?”

He’s lonely. He feels better here. He feels better with _her,_ her focused game-plan helping him pick something to order. The way she chuckles affectionately at the drunks singing at the top of their lungs two tables over. the way all the waitresses _love_ her, call her "Baby", and it makes him feel like he's there with the right person, and the right person wants to be there with him.

He should have just said all that.

Rey stops chewing.

“I don’t really…” she stabs her fork into a chunk of sausage in gravy thick enough to lay down on without sinking in, “what does that have to do with anything?”

Everything, really, to do with him, but he swallows.

“Just that you haven’t gone home for winter break yet.”

“Neither have you,” she spits back.

Finals week has been over for days. The dorm had emptied swiftly, but Rey and Ben are the last to linger. He wonders, afraid to ask, if she’s going home at all.

He tried to keep his tone innocent, but he clearly didn’t manage not offending her. He stutters, staring at the butter in front of him.

“I skip out on family Christmas until I have to,” he shrugs. “They think I’m at a friend’s until Christmas Eve. Maybe I’ll push that I’m staying there for the holiday; and they’ll just be happy for me for having a social life.”

She tilts her head, bacon placed over her tongue before biting down as she goes in for the kill;

 _“A social life_ doesn’t mean you skip out on a family holiday,” she chews with her mouth shut tight. Swallows. “Or do you mean they’d be excited that you have friends at all?”

He doesn’t look up at her after the question is asked. With a sigh, she returns to her food.

 _“I_ can notice things too,” her tone is defensive, somewhat knowing she was being meaner than necessary. “And if you have a place to go and you’d rather sit in a dorm with half the facilities shut down over Christmas break, you’re crazy.”

“Do you have a place to go?”

“No, I do not,” she waves her fork in a little circle next to her head, like a magic wand, “except here. They’re always open.”

“Would you,” he’s a little pissed at her, spoiling this bountiful feast and one of the few times he’s felt comfortable with a member of the opposite sex, “would you like to come home with me then?”

She stares at him, one eyebrow raised.

“My mom,” he rolls his eyes, “is always on my case about me not having any friends. So why don’t you, then?”

“I like the Waffle House,” she says flatly.

He crosses his arms. “It is a fine establishment and it will always be there for you. Now you have somewhere else to go, if you want. Why don’t you?”

“I don’t even know you.”

“You brought me here,” he waves a hand in the general direction of a group of drunk girls screaming over a dick pic one of their friends had just received during their meal, “and I get the sense you don’t bring a lot of people to this place. So why me? Why am I different?”

She douses the final waffle in her stack with a heavy pour of syrup. Her face is remarkably blank for someone who can be so personable with the waitress, so mellow inviting him along in the first place.

He glowers at her, both of them forgetting what they could potentially even _like_ about each other when she returns his sullen glare.

“I feel alone too,” he finally blurts out, “Obviously. I’m not good at expressing myself.”

She doesn’t soften, exactly, but she relaxes into her side of the booth.

“How’s the food at home?”

“It’s no Waffle House,” he concedes, returning to his meal. “But I figured we should give our arteries a break. Maybe this year it can feel like a choice when you’re here, and I’m there.”

“No, I’d-” Rey shakes her head, hacking a chunk of pecan-studded waffle off with her fork. “I’d like to come.”

He perks up, his plan seeming fifty feet ahead of him. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” she shrugs, wrinkling her nose, “unless it’s as unbearable as you say.”

"It won't be," he rushes out, "I mean, if you're there."

That much was true. If he had a guest, his mom would go all out, and his dad would be on his best behavior.

She smiles, maybe for the first time directly at and because of him.

"I'm not good at...expressing myself either," she shakes her head, that aggression gone as quickly as it comes, "this place is a constant for me. I don't have a lot of those. Maybe I thought you needed it too."

He looks at her dumbly. “I did, Rey. Thanks.”

She drips more syrup thoughtfully over her plate.

“And you’ll prove you have a friend.”

“You only have to _pretend_ to be that, if you don’t want to. For my mother's sake.”

For his too, dear God, for his. 

“No,” she smiles at her plate, returning to the furious pace of devouring her food. “we’re...friends.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you Poppi, you have given such a gift to this fandom, enough to redeem capitalism for one night only.


End file.
